


Walkabout

by MorganaNK



Category: Inspector Lynley - All Media Types, Inspector Lynley Mysteries (TV)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-07
Updated: 2019-03-07
Packaged: 2019-11-13 14:25:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18033422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MorganaNK/pseuds/MorganaNK
Summary: What was going on in Tommy's life during the six months Barbara had been asking him if he was okay after Helen's death?  Why did he lock himself away?Set after 'In A Blink Of An Eye' but before the events of 'Limbo'





	Walkabout

**Author's Note:**

> Property of Elizabeth George and the BBC, no copyright infringement intended
> 
> Inspired by the song 'Walkabout', written by Nik Kershaw from the 1989 album 'The Works'

I’ve often wondered what it’s like to be in prison, what it feels like to be deprived of your liberty, to not be able to do the things you have always taken for granted. Incarceration of mind and body; in all my wondering I never thought I would experience the reality.

I haven’t been outside in… well, it seems like forever but realistically I know it can’t be. Time has ceased to have meaning. Seconds, minutes, hours, days: they’ve all blurred into one. This flat that some would call a penthouse is wasted on me. I don’t marvel at the views, they mean nothing to me. It is my cell, and I have no desire to be released from it. 

I fear my sanity has gone on a walkabout.

Food has become a necessary evil, something I must consume when my stomach revolts against the quantity of alcohol I have poured down my throat. Frozen meals delivered from the supermarket and chucked into the microwave; tasteless reheated cardboard that bring me no pleasure; just a means to an end.

Get up, drink until I drown the demons in my head, then pass out. Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat. Sobriety is nothing but a distant memory. Occasionally I wake up screaming, but my loyal friend scotch soon soothes me back to slumber.

Reality tries to intrude, but it is not welcome here. The walls shut it out nearly as effectively as the fiery burn of Scotland’s finest. Why should I go back to a life that has done nothing for me, that holds nothing for me?

There is just one thing stopping me from taking the final step, one person whose voice the alcohol cannot drown out, one little spark of light in the abyss, an anchor for what little remains of the man Tommy Lynley used to be.

Barbara.

Barbara is, well it might be a cliché, but she is my everything, which is why I need to stay away from her. I am a curse, destroying everything I touch, and I refuse to destroy her, no matter how much I need her.

I don’t answer her calls, and when she turns up at the door, I pretend I’m not at home. But in the quiet moments before I slip into a drunken slumber it is her face I see, the one small comfort that I allow myself, before I remember who I am and what has happened, and it is a relief when sleep finally claims me and the cycle can begin again.


End file.
